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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores a tension in the Eurasian context between the public’s desire for a care-taking state and the rejection of that care once offered, using the politics of vaccine distribution and the public’s vaccine hesitancy as its empirical focus.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores a tension in the Eurasian context between the public’s desire for a care-taking state and the rejection of that care once offered, using the politics of vaccine distribution and the public’s vaccine hesitancy as its empirical focus. The paper develops three models of care that are available in an authoritarian context: patrimonial, empathetic, and empowering care. It demonstrates that the Kazakhstani government has shifted between different models of care over the pandemic, from an empathetic-oriented ethos to a patrimonially driven model, while eschewing empowerment in a way that might increase public confidence in vaccination.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper evaluates the role of online milieux of socialisation as potential sources of precarious information. Specifically, it identifies the key COVID-19-related narratives shared on thematic social media groups for labour migrants from Uzbekistan to Russia.

Paper long abstract:

Although some examples of precarious and misleading information related to the global COVID-19 pandemic have been reported on, the various sources of such information and the magnitude of its impact are yet to be fully comprehended. Moreover, there are cases and contexts that are underrepresented in academic inquiries. In response to the near absence of academic literature on the topic, this article takes on the task of evaluating the role of online milieux of socialisation for labour migrants from Uzbekistan to Russia as potential sources of precarious information related to COVID-19. Specifically, it addresses thematic groups across social media platforms such as Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, Facebook, and Telegram. The article responds to the following research question: What are the key COVID-19-related narratives shared on thematic social media groups for labour migrants from Uzbekistan to Russia? Through a netnographic study of these groups, the article presents the five identified COVID-19-related narrative clusters: “the remedy,” “practical information,” “the news,” “asking for help,” and “conspiracies and religion.” Given that all the identified narrative clusters contained misleading information, the article initiates a discussion on the role that thematic social media groups can play in (dis)informing labour migrants.

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Paper short abstract:

What power-knowledge distribution determines the Central Asian governments' measures related to COVID-19 and the population's attitude toward them? The paper argues that despite the modernization of these countries, they are dominated by a disciplinary mechanism, but not by a dispositif of security.

Paper long abstract:

Measures taken by governments over the world in relation to COVID-19 is considered by many researchers through the prism of biopolitics. The heuristic potential of this concept has made it possible to analyze the power relations emerging within the pandemic quite effectively. However, attention to the relationship between power and knowledge, to which discourses underpin power relations in this situation, has been rather low. Considering this question as key, I explore what distribution of power and knowledge determines the Central Asian governments' measures taken in connection with COVID-19 and attitudes of the population toward them. Specifically, why have the populations adopted quarantine measures, but, at the same time, a large part of the population has been critical of the need for vaccination? Given the wide range of definitions of biopolitics, I draw on Foucault’s understanding of the term as a form of governance that “is not typical of the legal code or the disciplinary mechanism, but of the apparatus (dispositif) of security” (Foucault 2007: 6). I argue that despite the “modernization” of Central Asian countries, they continue to be dominated by a disciplinary mechanism within a knowledge-power framework rather than a “dispositif of security”. Governments are willing to offer only disciplinary practices that rigidly separate what is allowed and what is forbidden, and the population is willing to accept them. At the same time, both governments and population are critical of security practices built on the idea of aleatory.

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Paper short abstract:

The formation of a completely new system of relations in Central Asia essentially leads to the transformation of the national interests of the states of the region to new realities, their practical adaptation and possible consolidation of approaches is achievable only on the basis of collective actions of two or more states with joint coordination of actions.

Paper long abstract:

The formation of a completely new system of relations in Central Asia essentially leads to the transformation of the national interests of the states of the region to new realities, their practical adaptation and possible consolidation of approaches is achievable only on the basis of collective actions of two or more states with joint coordination of actions. It is thanks to the new quality of Uzbekistan's bilateral relations with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan that close regional cooperation is beginning to form in the region.

As the basic components of growth, fundamentally new trends of regional development are strengthening in Central Asia, the new environment has significantly intensified trade and economic ties between the countries of Central Asia in post-pandemic period. Thus, by the end of 2021, Uzbekistan's trade turnover with the countries of the region exceeded $ 2.8 billion USA, for 200 million USD less than it was before pandemic, dynamic shows positive process. As the head of Uzbekistan noted at the recent summit of the heads of Central Asian states, in the coming years the volume of mutual trade will reach 5 billion US dollars.